Original subtitles

Narrator: Across the north atlantic,

More than 1,000 icebergs are on the loose,

Threatening shipping lanes and offshore exploration...

They hold the potential to actually bust open pipelines,

To tear up mooring cables.

At this point, we are almost double

The entire season total of last year.

There's a financial risk, but more importantly,

There's a life risk.

Narrator: To combat this frozen foe,

A fleet of ice-fighting machines is turning up the heat

On the world's largest frozen battlefield.

Meet the north atlantic's iceberg air force.

Armed with drones and high-flying tracking equipment,

This powerhouse team prepares to target and destroy icebergs

That are formed on the same deadly waterway

That took down the titanic.

[ thud, air horn blows ]

Hogan: When you see something that big from the airplane,

It's scary to imagine what would happen if you actually hit it.

Briggs: I'm pretty certain there's no one else out there

Flying drones in the north atlantic

In those kind of wind conditions.

This is really the future of iceberg reconnaissance.

-- Captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com

Captions paid for by discovery communications

On the eastern edge of north america,

An icy battle is under way

And one of america's coolest military machines

Is preparing to take flight.

The c-130 hercules was born in the 1950s

To do the heavy lifting in the hardest-to-get-to places.

♪

Now it's fighting a cold war of a different kind.

Its mission -- to monitor 40,000 icebergs a year...

♪

...Carved off the glaciers of greenland

That are on a deadly trajectory toward newfoundland,

Home to the busiest shipping lanes

And offshore oil fields in the world.

It's an annual ice migration

That threatens ships and offshore infrastructure,

Putting money and lives on the line.

♪

We're the first place on earth that had oil and gas development

In the presence of icebergs and sea ice.

You can't let your guard down

When you're navigating anywhere in these waters.

Narrator: There have been at least 58 major ice collisions

Around the world in recent decades,

From antarctic cruise ships to northern fishing trawlers,

And constant close calls on offshore platforms.

In 2017, we had an incident where a massive iceberg

Came 50 meters of a platform,

Close enough that they warned the crew

And asked them to prepare for impact.

Narrator: The most infamous disaster in these waters

Dates back more than a century,

When the titanic sank 400 miles off the coast of newfoundland,

Killing 1,500 people.

That tragedy led to the creation of a maritime defense force

Dedicated to pushing back

Against the unstoppable ice army from the north

Using science, engineering, technology,

And magnificent mega machines.

The c-130 hercules is the highest-flying weapon

In the arsenal.

A long-range aircraft operated by

The united states coast guard's international ice patrol.

It's a go-anywhere, do-anything machine...

♪

...That can take a beating in the cold ocean air.

It can fly across the north atlantic and back

On a single tank of fuel.

With a wingspan of 132 feet,

It can cruise the jet stream at 374 miles per hour,

Carrying nearly 42,000 pounds of gear.

On long-range missions,

The c-130 hercules tracks icebergs

To find safe shipping routes through the maze of ice.

Steve koch is tactical commander

With the united states coast guard.

Koch: So, what I have behind us

Is our primary aerial reconnaissance.

The c-130 gives us the opportunity

To have ice observers in the back of the plane

And then has space on the flight deck,

Where myself and our radar ice observer

Works with the air crew

To identify and accurately position icebergs.

♪

Narrator: The c-130's hunting ground is a dangerous section

Of the north atlantic known as iceberg alley,

A maritime corridor

Stretching from greenland to newfoundland,

Iceberg alley has two powerful ocean currents,

The baffin current and the labrador current,

That funnel icebergs south

Into harm's way.

♪

So, why is the coast guard in the cockpit

For a battle taking place in the deep north atlantic?

♪

Because once the bergs cross the 48th parallel,

They're an international threat.

That's where iceberg alley intersects

The great circle route,

The shortest distance for ship traffic

Between europe and the eastern seaboard,

A maritime highway

That transports 5 million cargo containers a year.

The reason we're involved and why it's important to us is,

Yes, we have the shipping traffic that comes from europe

Transecting the great circle route

To our ports in america.

We're also mandated by

The international convention of safety of life at sea

And the u.S. Code to execute this mission.

Narrator: The c-130 mission protects

World energy markets, as well,

Because newfoundland's offshore platforms

Lie in those same shipping lanes.

♪

They pose a tremendous hazard to offshore operations,

Particularly in the oil-and-gas sector.

Narrator: With thousands of mariners' lives

And $100 billion of commerce on the line,

It's up to the mighty hercules to get the job done.

Kenny: These icebergs --

I mean, typically they're from 100,000 to 200,000 tons,

And to put that into context,

This is the equivalent of about a 15-story apartment building.

Narrator: The c-130 crews use specialized mapping equipment

To locate hazardous icebergs in shipping lanes.

But tracking every iceberg

In an area larger than the state of kansas

Is no easy feat.

We cover a huge amount of area,

Basically from the tail of the grand banks

All the way north to the coast of labrador.

Narrator: Each day, crews monitor a different quadrant.

Using the data they collect,

They produce a warning for ships,

A boundary they simply call the iceberg limit.

Rudnickas: Once they pass st. John's,

Now they're within the maritime shipping lanes,

And now they're a hazard to maritime traffic.

Koch: It outlines and identifies

The potential amount of icebergs within this limit,

And that is a planning tool for the maritime community

To not transect that area.

Narrator: The goal is to keep ships

As far away from icebergs as possible.

I've seen icebergs that, in a snap, just break apart.

♪

I've seen icebergs where, you know,

When they calve off pieces,

That they create these little mini tsunamis

That could swamp vessels.

That's why you don't want to get so close to an iceberg.

Koch: With almost double amount of icebergs this season.

Our iceberg limit is expanded.

When the iceberg limit expanded,

It takes more patrols to cover that area,

And that's what we're facing.

Narrator: Steve koch and his mighty crew

Are ready to hit the skies.

U.S. Coast guard petty officer ryan hogan

Is in charge of ice spotting.

His eyes are the final line of defense

For tracking ice

That the monitoring equipment might have missed.

Hogan: When you see something that big

And when you're looking at them from the airplane

And you're realizing how big they are,

It's scary to imagine what would happen if you actually hit it.

Narrator: But even hogan's sharp eyes won't help today.

The crew is fogged in,

And with storm systems approaching,

Freezing fog can form a layer of ice on the plane.

♪

Experts say planes need 200 feet between the ground and clouds

And the ability to see about a half a mile ahead

To take off and land safely.

Until the skies clear up,

The safety of these unpredictable waters

Will depend on

Some of the world's most cutting-edge radar technology.

♪

♪

Narrator: Iceberg alley is one of the foggiest, windiest,

And most treacherous waterways on earth.

But thanks to the international ice patrol,

Nearly 85,000 square miles are monitored every day

For potentially hazardous ice conditions.

And the ice patrol's secret weapon --

The versatile workhorse of the sky --

The c-130 hercules.

But iceberg alley wasn't always so well-protected.

Before the introduction of long-range aircraft,

The international ice patrol was more navy than air force,

And their effort to fight science failed.

Koch: Back in the day,

They tried to use explosives to blow up the icebergs,

But unfortunately, all that did was create more little icebergs.

♪

We've had cases where we drill down,

Put dynamite in the berg, and just go poof!

It's so massive.

There's so much energy trapped in that huge iceberg

That the amount of energy that you would need

To put into it to blow it apart is tremendous.

Narrator: When firepower failed,

It was decided the best offense is a high-flying defense,

And an unlikely hero came to the rescue.

By the end of the korean war,

The old world war ii cargo planes

Weren't getting the job done,

With gear getting bigger and heavier.

Yet, their unique design made them an asset.

Engineers took the biggest piece of gear

The military had at the time,

The m551 sheridan tank,

And drew a circle around it.

That was the diameter of the plane,

The length of the body from the cockpit back,

The size of a railway car.

Then, they just had to make it fly.

Somewhere between

The old reliable piston in prop airplanes

And the new turbo jets,

The c-130 was powered by turbo prop engines,

More fuel-efficient than the jets

And more heavy-duty than the old piston engines.

♪

Sweet handling has earned it a reputation

As a pilot's airplane.

With four nearly 4,000-horsepower engines,

It can take off and land in 787 feet of runway.

The c-130 has been working at the front lines

Longer than any other plane...

And they just keep adding more tech.

As time went on and technology improved,

We started using

Highly sophisticated aircraft with radar.

Narrator: Radar is a detection system

Where electromagnetic waves are emitted by a transmitter.

When the waves hit an object, they bounce back.

A receiver and processor then analyze

The objects' dimensions, speed, and location.

On the c-130, radar tools with

High-resolution, night-and-day, weather-independent capability

Can find and track almost every iceberg,

Even in the heaviest seas.

[ bird caws ]

Bring in radar, and it expands

The area that we can search and identify targets.

And if we get something on radar

That we can see beyond our visibility,

We can come off track

And go look to see what those targets are.

Narrator: Once they've been identified,

Then the task is to track the icebergs

As they enter shipping lanes via the labrador current

And keep a continuous computer plot

Of the known or estimated whereabouts of every berg.

♪

The future will be flying even higher.

New satellite radar systems will be orbiting the earth,

Tracking every iceberg in the sea.

Power: So, if you look at what we've done,

The technologies that we've developed,

That has led to about $3 billion in savings.

That amount of savings means that there are fields out there

That without our knowledge, our influence,

Would not be developed today.

Narrator: Newfoundland native kelly dodge

Leads a team of analysts,

Who is currently using the latest technology available

To track icebergs.

So, here we can see several different satellites.

So, we have got the sentinel satellite,

Which is a european satellite.

We've also got cosmo-skymed in tx/rx,

And these are all european satellites.

Narrator: Along with a fleet of canadian satellites,

These eyes in the sky pass over newfoundland twice a day.

Some images they capture are called "optical" --

They're clear and easy to read, like high-res photographs,

But they're only helpful when captured in daytime

When skies are clear.

The real weapon is 24-hour, cloud-piercing radar

Known as "sar."

Synthetic aperture radar is a sar satellite,

So it's a radar-based satellite, so it emits an energy signal,

And then that bounces off

Of the objects that are in the ocean

And the ocean itself.

And in order to detect a target,

It has to be brighter than the ocean.

So we can see icebergs and ships

Because that signal returns stronger than the background.

Narrator: Sar holds a wealth of life-saving information --

It can locate, track movement and the speed of icebergs

That are on the move

From one part of iceberg alley to another...

♪

...All crucial info that is passed on

To teams working in iceberg alley.

♪

But even with all this technology,

Icebergs can still evade detection,

Slippery enemies that can hide in the swell and waves

Or be mistaken for ships at sea.

You will have icebergs and bergy bits in the water,

And sometimes, even with modern radar,

You will not be able to detect those pieces of ice.

Narrator: Off newfoundland,

Experts estimate 5% of bergs still go undetected.

Until the satellite technology is perfected,

The last hope for iceberg alley is a human eye in the sky.

It's a call to action for the international ice patrol.

So, we have this juxtaposition of the natural beauty

Thousands of years in the making

And commercial traffic and our way of life,

And our job is to kind of keep those two things separate.

Narrator: But the c-130 and its team of ice experts

Have been grounded for days

Because storms have made it unsafe to fly.

Now the skies are clearing, and they're gearing up

To tackle iceberg alley

In their amped-up, one-of-a-kind mega machine.

[ whirring softly ]

♪

♪

Narrator: It's the busiest year on record in iceberg alley --

More than 1,200 icebergs are heading south.

These majestic cathedrals of the sea

Might look beautiful,

But don't let their good looks fool you.

When you get really close to a huge iceberg,

It's big and beautiful and very, very dangerous.

Kenny: They hold the potential to actually bust open pipelines,

To tear up mooring cables,

To destroy hundreds of billions of dollars

Worth of infrastructure on the seabed.

So that's a clear and present danger.

Narrator: And it's a problem that's not going to melt away.

This dangerous and deadly ice cycle begins each summer,

And it's been happening for thousands of years.

Ralph: Ice forms from snow

That gets accumulated on the inner portions of greenland.

And over the course of thousands of years, it flows.

And as the pressure builds up on the inland caps,

It presses the ice out at the edges.

The icebergs will go out to the edge,

And eventually, they will be too heavy to hang off the edge.

They will break and then fall into the ocean.

Narrator: By the end of summer, 40,000 bergs

Will begin a collision course down iceberg alley.

Woodworth-lynas: Some of them could be large,

Very flat, tabular icebergs.

Some of them are round. Some of them are chunky.

When the sea ice goes or melts or moves away

And the icebergs are exposed to ocean waves,

That's what starts to cut them up.

And then they start to get

These rather interesting, rounded, and strange shapes.

Dodge: They travel down in that labrador current,

And when they hit newfoundland,

They can take one of three directions.

They can travel along the avalon channel,

Which will put them along the coast

Of newfoundland and labrador.

They can travel along the flemish pass,

Which will cause risks to the oil-and-gas industry.

And they can also go into the deep waters and go further west.

But no matter which way they travel,

They all pose a risk to the shipping lanes that we have.

Broderick: For mariners who navigate these waters,

The iceberg is as dangerous today as it was 100 years ago.

Narrator: Meanwhile, at the airport

In newfoundland's capital, st. John's,

The toughest weapon in the ice-fighting arsenal

Is back in business.

After being grounded by inclement weather,

The crew just received clearance to fly.

So now it's time to get on board the workhorse of iceberg alley.

The c-130 hercules

Is 98 feet long with a 132-foot wingspan.

It can fly nearly 5,600 miles on a single tank of fuel

And can go more than 20 hours without landing.

The c-130 has surveyed

Northern sections of iceberg alley this season,

But the team's fallen behind

In tracking bergs to the east and the south.

Koch: So, for today's mission,

We are going to verify the southern limit

And also the flemish pass.

We have, approximately, at the beginning of the flight,

About a half a dozen icebergs on plot.

So we're going to verify that they are there or not there.

Narrator: They'll rely on radar teams up front

And ice spotter ryan hogan in the rear.

So, the crew of the ice patrol is typically 12 to 14 personnel.

That involves the pilot and copilot and loadmaster,

Two of our mission system operators,

Part of the air crew,

Myself as the tactical commander,

And our radar ice observer.

During the flight as a tactical commander,

I'm tracking what's going on.

It's as simple as that --

Marking the turns, what on-scene weather conditions are,

If we either descend or ascend

To try to get better visibility to identify the icebergs.

Narrator: Now, as a field of icebergs appears on the horizon,

The ice spotters get into position.

As the crew gets close to the patrol area,

They fire up their computer tracking system.

Once the radar team gets online,

Ryan hogan will confirm the bergs' positions.

Hogan: So, we're scanning the area for icebergs,

Or we're waiting for the radar to let us know

If there's something a little further out.

Then we'll try to put eyes on it.

If we need to, we'll use the binoculars to get their size.

And we'll put that into the computer.

Narrator: The data is ingested

Into an iceberg analysis and prediction system.

It will be used to produce the daily ice-danger forecasts...

♪

...A crucial resource for mariners.

Every single day, we generate a line in the water

Where we say, "this is where the iceberg danger exists,"

And we send that out to the maritime community.

Narrator: But even after confirming the radar targets,

Hogan keeps searching...

Because sometimes bergs look like ships on radar.

Thankfully, this time, there are no surprises.

The search grid gets an all-clear from the spotters,

But that was just the first mission of the day.

The crew now heads to the southern limits of iceberg alley

Where one such bergy bit

Caused one of the most infamous disasters in history --

The sinking of the titanic. [ air horn blows ]

As they travel south from greenland,

Decaying icebergs create additional hazards

Because of their trail of smaller, broken-off bergs

Called "growlers" and "bergy bits."

Although small in size,

They are the most dangerous and hardest to spot.

And of the 15,000 to 30,000 icebergs

Calved each year by the greenland glaciers,

Only about 1% of them

Ever make it all the way to the atlantic.

When the titanic sank on April 15, 1912,

The berg was at roughly the same longitude as boston,

Over 5,000 miles south of the arctic circle.

Today, the hope is that the ice patrol

Will be able to predict when and where icebergs will calve

And how long it will take for it to travel

From one region to another.

Rudnickas: So, we just commemorated

The 107th anniversary of titanic sinking

Just a couple weeks ago.

And we still -- to this day, every year,

The international ice patrol from our c-130s

Deploy wreaths at sea

As close to the sinking location as we can

To commemorate those lives lost.

For us, it was the beginning

Of the international ice patrol story.

Icebergs have been around for a very long time,

But it was that titanic sinking event

That let the communities of the northern hemisphere,

Basically, understand that there is a hazard

From icebergs for transatlantic shipping

And, hence, started the international ice patrol.

Narrator: The crew is nearly 560 miles

From titanic's resting place

During an unpredictable ice season.

The stakes are getting higher every year.

Melting arctic ice means more bergs and more ships

Are traveling arctic waters.

Steve koch and ryan hogan

Are methodically tackling iceberg alley

One quadrant at a time.

And while the international ice patrol's c-130

Pushes south through iceberg alley,

A second expedition is under way

That's never been attempted before.

♪

♪

Narrator: Across the north atlantic shipping lanes,

Harsh weather and high seas make for a deadly combination,

Even for a modern vessel.

Thanks to the international ice patrol,

Ships traveling across iceberg alley

Are able to reduce the threat of collision.

Today, as the c-130 air crew pushes south,

A research team is meeting up with the crew

On the u.S. Coast guard cutter juniper

To carry drone operators into the thick of iceberg alley.

So, we're about to set sail to start a project

For tagging icebergs in the north atlantic.

The project has been set up

And started by the international ice patrol,

And they contracted sea corp to work with them.

Narrator: The plan is to use drones to plant tracking devices

On dozens of icebergs.

♪

With the help of advanced algorithms

And satellite technology, they'll analyze the trajectories

And learn how to predict iceberg movement like never before.

♪

Briggs: So, these are the models

That we've developed for this program.

It's carbon fiber and fiberglass, so it floats.

So it increases the probability of success of data collection

By allowing us to land in the water.

It means we can recover it from the water,

Dust it off, and get it ready to go out another time.

Narrator: If they're successful

And learn to identify smaller bergs in the swell and waves,

Hopes are high this project could someday help support

The c-130 mission --

A new generation of micro-sized machines

That could keep the ice patrol out of harm's way.

Briggs: So, the beacon will actually clip underneath.

See these servomechanisms here?

There's a two-stage release, which we fly over the iceberg.

The first stage of the release

Will release a line and about 5 meters of wire

So that the tracker is hanging underneath.

Tag is hanging underneath the drone, flopping around.

We see it on the camera.

And then the pilot is able to lift the drone up and down.

We seat it in a location that we like,

And then we pull a second pin, and that releases the line,

And the tag is left on the iceberg,

And the drone safely comes home.

Narrator: All briggs and his team need to do now

Is find some bergs bigger

Than the one that shredded the titanic.

And they've got the mega machine sea giant

That will take them there.

The juniper is a 230-foot seagoing buoy tender

Designed to work in almost any environment,

With a hull nearly an inch thick to handle icy waters

And a steering system

That can cut some pretty tight corners.

♪

Greg batchelder is the juniper's captain.

So, this is the bridge of the ship,

Also known as the pilot house.

And this is where we operate the cutter from.

So, we have the main throttle here

That controls how fast we go.

We also have steering.

So, there's no more steering wheels.

This is actually a lever that controls our rudder,

And something that's unique about the juniper

And this class of vessel

Is we have dynamic-positioning system,

Which enables us to hold position

Within a few feet of where we want to maintain station.

And all of our navigation is now done with electronic charts,

And we have multiple screens throughout the bridge,

So we're always aware of where we are.

And all the watch standers up here are well aware

Of where we are navigating at any given time.

Narrator: With the tracking devices loaded

And sea corp's drone pilots onboard,

The juniper is ready to go.

Captain, checklist complete.

Request to get juniper under way.

Roger. Get juniper under way.

Alright.

Narrator: After traveling

Through harsh weather and rough seas,

The crew has finally made it to the testing location.

♪

Now, in calmer waters surrounded by ice,

The team can finally

Put their drone delivery system to the test.

♪

Briggs: The very first flight's always challenging.

That's very stressful -- to make sure everything's behaving well,

Nothing's got damaged in the mobilization.

I'm pretty certain there's no one else out there

Flying drones in the north atlantic

From a pitching and heaving vessel

Onto an iceberg to deploy the tracker

In those kind of wind conditions.

Narrator: The crew wants to track enough icebergs

To learn how to distinguish them from ships

And keep them from evading detection on iceberg alley.

Briggs: So, as we approach the iceberg,

We're able to use the two cameras that are mounted here.

We have a forward-looking camera,

And we have a rear-looking camera at the back.

And the pilot is able to choose which view we get.

And I'm looking on a monitor.

And so we'll flick to the downward-looking camera,

And as we look at the iceberg, we'll be able to see

When we cross the threshold of the iceberg.

And at that point, we know that we're over the iceberg.

And if we do fly too far on the other side

On some of the smaller bergs,

Then we're able to draw ourselves back.

Narrator: They're battling wind, waves,

And approaching storm systems,

With years of research and preparation on the line.

Briggs: And once we're positioned

In a suitable location over the iceberg,

We can release stage one of the deployment system.

And then that swings on the end of its line,

And then we can lower it, pull pin two,

Leaving the tracker on the iceberg,

And we return with the vehicle.

Narrator: And the first drop is a bull's-eye,

With hundreds of bergs within striking distance,

Rob briggs believes they can conquer iceberg alley

One berg and one tracking device at a time.

While rob and his team

Are tracking icebergs on the open seas,

A team of aerodynamicists and flight engineers

Are testing the latest in ice-fighting technologies.

Meadus: We take real-life problems,

We break them down to model scale,

And we come up with solutions.

♪

♪

Narrator: Shortly after the titanic hit an iceberg

On April 14, 1912,

The world started thinking differently

About maritime navigation and communication.

In order to make the open waters a safer place for mariners,

International organizations came together

To make sure another catastrophe like that

Couldn't happen again.

One of the partners in that fight

Is the national research center of canada.

Meadus: Here at the national research council,

The ice tank facility,

We have the largest facility in north america,

90 meters long, 12 meters wide, and 3 meters deep.

We take real-life problems,

We break them down to model scale,

And we come up with solutions.

Narrator: Essentially, chris meadus and team

Test stuff to survive the icy offshore.

Today, it's a hull design for a u.S. Coast guard vessel.

We will go in the arctic.

We will do full-scale trials

Where we collect ice thicknesses and strengths of the ice

Where a particular boat is operating.

Then coming back here in the building,

We program our machinery,

And we can bring this tank down to minus 20.

Narrator: They use model boats built at a scale of 1:18.

After stick-handling through some fine-tuning,

The team conducts tests that will ensure

The vessel's hull is strong enough

To withstand the ice it will operate in.

♪

Meadus: So, the shape of your hull going through ice --

We measure the thrust, the torques.

If we can get the thrust and the torques down

And maintain a constant speed, then you're saving money.

The more power you need, the more fuel you're gonna need.

So designing a hull that goes through the ice

The most efficient way possible, safely, is the object.

♪

Narrator: Located across the street from the ice tank

Is another marine simulator

That provides aspiring mariners

A space to learn how to pilot safely.

March: But right now,

We're at the centre for marine simulation.

It's part of the memorial university

Of newfoundland and labrador.

We take people, and we put them in the environment

That they're actually going to work.

Offshore here on the east coast,

It's not so much surrounded by icebergs,

But you've been surrounded by a possibility of icebergs.

It's foggy.

The radars are picking up wind waves.

The radars are picking up snow.

You're often trying to determine what's an actual bergy bit,

Or a berg, or what could be a berg

To just backscatter on the radars from wind and waves.

It's a challenging environment.

Narrator: While inside the simulator,

Aspiring pilots will take a test run

Through a basic ice-navigational course.

March: The students will come into this simulation

With the idea that they're in ice-infested waters,

And they have to navigate around them.

The idea is, is that you try your best not to hit ice.

So in this case here, we're on a medium-sized tanker,

And we're gonna try to navigate around all of the icebergy bits

And associated things.

♪

All these spots that we see on the radar is actually icebergs.

So right now we're gonna start to move forward.

We're going about 3 1/2 knots.

♪

So I'm gonna continue to move along

And try to make sure I don't hit this small piece of ice

Up here on the port side.

Obviously, I don't want to hit the really big pieces of ice.

The bergs are usually categorized in different sizes

Of small, medium, large.

And of course, the smallest of all is the growlers.

Narrator: They're called "growlers"

Because they make noise as they melt.

And in a world where radar and ice spotters

Detect larger bergs,

Conquering these can be the most valuable lesson of all,

As we learned from what took down the titanic.

March: They're actually the worst

Because they sit so low in the water

And are very small chunks of ice,

But are very hard chunks of ice,

And they're always very difficult to detect.

And if you hit them, you can cause damage to your vessel.

♪

Narrator: 9/10 of an iceberg is underwater.

As water freezes, the molecules expand,

Making ice less dense than liquid h2o.

And when something is less dense than water, it floats.

In this case, ice is 90% as dense as its liquid counterpart,

Meaning 90% of the berg lies underwater

And invisible to mariners.

Luckily, one robotics company

Is trying to get to the bottom of it.

So, just last year we came out with a new product

Called sea vision, which is the first of the world

To use rgb -- red, green, and blue -- lasers

For profiling underwater objects, including icebergs.

So that's a sensor.

So then we need to put that sensor on a platform

To be able to go and actually profile the object

And track the object.

Narrator: And they've just designed an

Autonomous underwater vehicle, or auv,

That can carry the sensor to great depths,

Analyzing the shape and track of the berg.

So, what we have going on this year

Is that we have an auv called "thunderfish,"

Which is a fully unmanned system.

So that means the auv can track the iceberg as it's moving

To be able to monitor and measure and track

And understand the changes in the underwater morphology,

Or the underwater shape, of the iceberg

Because that shape is impacting its drift.

It's impacting its speed.

It's impacting its potential collapse time,

Its breakup time, its shatter time.

So we see a big opportunity to have these robots out doing

Pretty much what humans can't do.

Narrator: But on iceberg alley,

There are some jobs that only humans can do...

21z -- wind's 180, 12 knots,

Plus 6 statute miles of visibility.

Narrator: ...Because even all this technology isn't enough

To keep some bergs from slipping through the cracks...

Threatening offshore installations.

Wheaton: So far this year, offshore operations

Had to divert 30 icebergs away from operations

To prevent impact on the platforms.

Narrator: When that happens, offshore teams use

High-powered h2o to blast the bergs out of harm's way.

They have huge water cannons on the supply vessels

That they can use to spray the icebergs

And deflect the icebergs.

It's actually very effective at both deflecting the icebergs

And melting them at the same time.

There's also something called "prop wash,"

Where the supply vessels

Will actually turn their props towards the iceberg

And push the icebergs out of the way.

Narrator: And to move them even further,

Sometimes offshore teams need to tackle bergs with a lasso...

But those tend to slip off.

♪

So ice specialist freeman ralph developed an iceberg net.

♪

I like the analogy -- a baseball.

If you're an outfielder and you have just a sling,

It's gonna be extremely hard to catch the fly ball.

But if you have a good catcher's mitt,

Now you've got a tool that's gonna allow you

To be quite effective in fulfilling your purpose.

And that was the purpose of the net.

Narrator: It's a low-tech offense in the ultimate battle

Of humanity versus nature.

The best ice offense is a disciplined defense.

That's why it's so important

For the ice patrol to tackle the front lines.

And in the future,

They'll have a new partner in the fight against the bergs.

♪

♪

Narrator: High above the open waters of the north atlantic,

Ice spotter ryan hogan

Has maintained a frozen vigil for five long hours...

As the international ice patrol's c-130

Crosses the 43rd parallel.

It's their second mission of the day.

And this one's in familiar territory.

We'll get ready for the patrol on the way down.

And then, when we commence search on our patrol,

We're roughly 60 nautical miles north of where the titanic sank.

Narrator: The further south icebergs travel,

The more difficult they are to track

And the more dangerous and unpredictable they become.

♪

Now, on the assigned grid, they begin.

The crew up front confirms there's nothing on radar,

But ryan hogan continues to look.

The farthest south an iceberg has ever been spotted

Was in 1926 between bermuda and north carolina.

There's even evidence that, at the end of the ice age,

Icebergs scraped the ocean bottom

Along the coast of florida.

We go out, and we find icebergs

That are not on the prognosis,

Or what we call adds to the model.

That is a big deal because we want to ensure

That we have the most accurate information.

Narrator: The team is preparing to turn back

When, off in the distance,

Hogan spots one that slipped through the cracks,

A small iceberg that wasn't on any chart,

Hidden in the swell and waves.

They get enough information to work out

Where the berg might go from here,

And then they head home.

This is a new iceberg limit,

A new outer edge for iceberg alley.

♪

As ships push the boundaries

And the changing climate creates more and bigger icebergs,

The international ice patrol

Will have to expand their search range.

♪

Meanwhile, back on the ground,

Rob briggs has returned

From tagging icebergs in the north atlantic.

So far, it's been a success.

So, in terms of the preliminary analysis,

Of the beacons that we put out,

There was two that were particularly exciting to us.

The first one was put on a small iceberg

That we most deployed in the middle of a windstorm.

And then, the next day, the windstorm died,

And the iceberg's track proved to pick up the currents again.

So we got a very nice spaghetti plot

Of the track of the iceberg.

And the second track that we got that was nice --

The iceberg actually broke up, deposited the tracker

So we can pinpoint the moment that the iceberg broke,

Which, again, is a very rare event to have that track

And be able to sort of see the --

It's not the birth of the iceberg,

But pick it up at a certain point in its life,

Watch it die, and then record the death of it.

Narrator: Rob briggs will continue his mission

In the weeks to come with more tagging, more drones,

And more excursions away from home,

Riding the waves and swells on iceberg alley

Because using smaller machines

To keep people out of harm's way

Is the future of iceberg reconnaissance.

The less we have to put a flight crew out there

In potentially hazardous conditions,

The less we have to put ships out there

In potentially hazardous conditions --

And if we can reliably get that iceberg data,

Those locations, then we can provide

An even more accurate warning product to vessels at sea.

Narrator: And iceberg alley

Recently got some help from above

With the deployment of three new satellites,

A project called "radarsat constellation mission,"

Which began orbiting the earth in 2019.

Power: The nice thing about radarsat constellation mission

Is it's not one satellite -- it's three.

We have blanket coverage of canada's coastlines

From coast to coast to coast every single day.

We're on the cutting edge with this technology.

As the sea ice melts,

We're gonna be seeing more and more icebergs coming down.

We're gonna be seeing more vessels going up into the arctic

Into areas that have been uncharted by humankind.

And as we start looking

At extracting resources in the arctic,

How do we understand what happens

And the impacts on our environment?

Narrator: As oil exploration moves to deeper waters

And more shipping lanes open in northern waters,

Iceberg fighting forces will work together

To improve ice monitoring

On the world's largest frozen battleground.

♪

Ralph: We're always looking to progress.

There's always some room to enhance the operations.

We can enhance the detection.

We can look at integrated solution.

♪

Wheaton: Our challenges are not going away.

In fact, I think our challenges are going to get much greater.

Narrator: The future on iceberg alley

Involves more satellites

Providing the ice patrol and research organizations

Complete radar coverage.

Dodge: When we can get a daily view

Of what icebergs are in the area and what's approaching.

That improves safety because we can understand then,

On a daily basis, what the iceberg populations are like.

♪

Narrator: The temptation for ships to take arctic shortcuts

Is getting greater.

Ships are also spending more time

In the iceberg-infested waters around iceberg alley

In search of natural resources like minerals, oil, and gas.

The modern arctic is an iceberg factory,

And it's speeding up production,

Creating bigger icebergs

And many smaller, more dangerous ones.

Koch: Flying in the aircraft with our ice observers,

Looking out the windows, using the binoculars,

Our radar ice observer working with

Our mission system operators

Gives us the best opportunity at this point

And the highest confidence for detection.

Narrator: The international ice patrol

Has been at war with an endless army of ice

For more than 100 years.

They use the coolest machines in the world,

And it won't be long until radar reinforcements

Take the fight to space,

Where new technology will keep continuous track

Of every iceberg

In the moving maze of ice we call "iceberg alley."

♪